i'm thinking your HDD are just bad. or maybe the connection to them. have you opened up your case, and attempted to make sure all plugs and cables are pushed in all the way? maybe the HDD bracket isn't it all the way, take out the drive, then push it back in all the way. make sure all cards are pushed into their connectors properly, etc.
even tried to do this with the top of the case off of it?

i'm thinking your HDD are just bad. or maybe the connection to them. have you opened up your case, and attempted to make sure all plugs and cables are pushed in all the way? maybe the HDD bracket isn't it all the way, take out the drive, then push it back in all the way. make sure all cards are pushed into their connectors properly, etc.
even tried to do this with the top of the case off of it?

Yup...the company I got the box from was very nice about trying to help me out. They sent me new RAM for it...new drives...I've swapped them all in/out in about every combination.
At this point, I've got another motherboard for it...thinking a swap of this might address a scsi bus problem?

However, and this is strange...on an iBook I have now...for some reason IT is now starting to lock up cold on emerge sync when it gets to the part of updating the portage cache....but, that is not a fresh install..but, similar problem.

On this box...in addition to swapping out drives and RAM and such...I've tried different partitioning arrangements, etc.

This box has solaris on it working when I got it...so, it appeared it was working fine, but, some combo of it and Gentoo install just isn't working.....

I'm thinking to try latest version of LiveCD...maybe something has changed since I last tried to install....I think there is a new portage now. New profiles..etc.?

I just am hoping to avoid having to strip this whole box out...switch the motherboard..and put it all back together...especially being this is my first time to take a Sun box apart...and no manual with me....etc.

Thanks for the reply!!! Any further suggestions/ideas/links greatly appreciated!!

C_________________Light travels faster than sound. This is why some people appear bright until you hear them speak.........

I read the post and Weeve didn't mentioned it. He should know if this still vaild or not.
I know that my Ultra1 3d Creator.
I used older 1.4 version.
I only have one thought.
In past it was thought that sparc needed first track for /boot was "1"
Not Zero.
Not sure you want to try that, Here is my disk partitions.

Just a wild guess: Have you tried booting with ide=nodma?
I was having severe lockup issues untill i started using that.

Every time i upgrade my kernel (from 2.4 to 2.6.6 and now to 2.6.9) i
try booting without ide=nodma, hoping the issue is gone, but no luck.
I think my IDE drive only supports UDMA33, so my issue is probably
H/W related, nothing to do with the kernel.

Just a wild guess: Have you tried booting with ide=nodma?
I was having severe lockup issues untill i started using that.

Every time i upgrade my kernel (from 2.4 to 2.6.6 and now to 2.6.9) i
try booting without ide=nodma, hoping the issue is gone, but no luck.
I think my IDE drive only supports UDMA33, so my issue is probably
H/W related, nothing to do with the kernel.

Try it. It just take a reboot, you got nothing to loose.

HTH
-a

I think my drives on the Ultra2 is scsi...?? Is there a scsi=nodma optiion?

Trying again with the latest version of the live cd...

cayenne_________________Light travels faster than sound. This is why some people appear bright until you hear them speak.........

If the problem is your controller or disk, this will not cure it, bit it might make it less likely.

By the way, since you have two systems, you can rule out or confirm problems with the disks themselves by swapping them between systems.
(E.g., move the disks from your failing system to the working one, and try
the emerge --sync again.)

Oh, and don't use reiserfs; some of us have had bad experiences with it.